The 2000 Maidstone Council election took place on 4 May 2000 to elect members of Maidstone

Maidstone (borough)

Maidstone is a local government district with borough status in Kent, England. Its administrative centre is Maidstone which is also the County town of Kent...

 Borough

Borough status in the United Kingdom

Borough status in the United Kingdom is granted by royal charter to local government districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The status is purely honorary, and does not give any additional powers to the council or inhabitants of the district...

 Council in Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. One third of the council was up for election and the council stayed under no overall control

No overall control

Within the context of local councils of the United Kingdom, the term No Overall Control refers to a situation in which no single party achieves a majority of seats and is analogous to a hung parliament...

.

After the election, the composition of the council was

• Liberal Democrat 22
• Conservative
  Conservative Party (UK)
  The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
  
   16
• Labour
  Labour Party (UK)
  The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
  
   12
• Independent
  Independent (politician)
  In politics, an independent or non-party politician is an individual not affiliated to any political party. Independents may hold a centrist viewpoint between those of major political parties, a viewpoint more extreme than any major party, or they may have a viewpoint based on issues that they do...
  
   5

Campaign

Before the election no party had a majority, with the Liberal Democrats the largest party on the council. Asylum seekers was reported as being a big issue in the election, after a rise in council tax

Council tax

Council Tax is the system of local taxation used in England, Scotland and Wales to part fund the services provided by local government in each country. It was introduced in 1993 by the Local Government Finance Act 1992, as a successor to the unpopular Community Charge...

 from Kent County Council

Kent County Council

Kent County Council is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Kent in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils. The county council has 84 elected councillors...

 was partly put down to asylum seekers in the county. The Conservative party

Conservative Party (UK)

The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...

 said it was boosted in the election by pledges of a "crackdown" made by the national party leader William Hague

William Hague

William Jefferson Hague is the British Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State. He served as Leader of the Conservative Party from June 1997 to September 2001...

.

Election result

Overall turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

in the election was 27.1%.

Ward results